Musical genius and sheer graft alone didn’t make AC/DC the biggest rock band in the world. It is also required the support, commitment and individual talent of key people behind the scenes.

1. MUTT LANGE

​The perfectionist producer behind Highway To Hell, Back In Black and For Those About To Rock (We Salute You). AC/DC never sounded as consistently good as it did on those three key albums, Lange conspicuously improving background vocals (“Highway To Hell” a prime example) and bringing to the recording process a new emphasis on “space”. The dynamics on those albums have never been bettered and listeners agreed: Back In Black is the second-biggest selling album of all time. It wasn’t enough to save Lange from the chop. He was axed after For Those About To Rock (1981) and has barely said a word about AC/DC since.

2. GERARD HUERTA​​The designer (or co-designer, according to Atlantic Records art director Bob Defrin) of AC/DC’s iconic logo: one of the great logos of all time, not just in rock music but also big business. Based on the letterforms of the Gutenberg Bible and inspired by a similar logo he did for Blue Öyster Cult, Huerta produced the logo for the US issue of Let There Be Rock in 1977 — for which he got a one-off fee. AC/DC went away and used another logo for 1978’s Powerage then came back to Huerta’s logo for If You Want Blood and Highway To Hell. It’s been used on anything to do with the band ever since. Huerta has not received a cent in royalties for its use in any of the band’s merchandising and is still waiting for his first phone call from a member of the Young family.

​3. MICHAEL KLENFNER

A senior vice-president at Atlantic Records during the key years when AC/DC was trying to break in America, Klenfner (pictured with former wife Carol Klenfner and Pete Townshend of The Who) was regarded by many who worked with him at the record company as the band’s biggest champion. The support was crucial: AC/DC was at one point in danger of being dropped altogether. However his “bull in a china shop” manner didn’t endear him to some colleagues and ultimately would see him butt heads with Atlantic president Jerry Greenberg over the choice of producer for Highway To Hell. Klenfner wanted Eddie Kramer. Greenberg wanted Lange. Klenfner came off second best and was fired after having a verbal altercation with Lange’s manager, Clive Calder. Klenfner died in 2009.

4. TONY CURRENTI

The drummer for every track but one on AC/DC’s first album, High Voltage, and the single “High Voltage” which came afterwards. Three Currenti drum tracks featured on the band’s first American release, High Voltage (1976), a combination of their first two Australian albums. Three Currenti drum tracks also appeared on the 1984 EP ’74 Jailbreak. Sicily-born Currenti was asked to join AC/DC but turned down the offer because he feared being conscripted into the Italian army if he travelled with the band to England. A friend of Bon Scott, Currenti has not been credited on any AC/DC albums and today runs Tonino's Penshurst Pizzeria in Sydney, Australia. After 38 years away from music, he returned to playing drums in early 2014 and now regularly performs with tribute bands in Australia, Italy, Spain and England. He’s a superb drummer: the Italian Charlie Watts.

5. PERRY COOPER

Klenfner’s lieutenant at Atlantic — indeed he came to the record company from Arista with Klenfner as a team in 1977 — head of artist relations Cooper was a popular figure with AC/DC and was the name on Bon Scott’s emergency-person-to-contact card, according to his daughter Renée. Cooper was a driver, along with Judy Libow and Barry Bergman, of the Live From the Atlantic Studios promotion in 1977, engineered by future Jay-Z and Justin Timberlake engineer Jimmy Douglass, that went out to American radio stations and helped get the band critical airplay before they broke with 1979’s Highway to Hell. Cooper remained close to the band after Bon Scott’s death in 1980. He died in 2005.

​6. MARK EVANS

Bass player Evans is commonly regarded by fans as part of the “classic” line-up but was unceremoniously dumped before their maiden tour of the United States in July 1977. Between 1975 and ’77 Evans played live with AC/DC in Australia, the United Kingdom and Europe and on many of the original recordings that make up AC/DC’s “greatest hits". That wasn’t enough, though, for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. When AC/DC was inducted in 2003, Evans wasn’t there to celebrate with them on stage, despite being initially invited. The Hall of Fame withdrew the invitation, claiming he was ineligible. Evans stills plays music – he recently joined Rose Tattoo – and runs a guitar shop in Sydney.

7. BILL BARTLETT

The first man to play AC/DC on the radio in the United States. Jacksonville DJ and program director Bartlett came to Australia as a foreign-exchange student in the early 1970s and got on to the mailing lists of Australian record companies. Bartlett took it upon himself to promote Aussie music on WPDQ/WAIV and not only gave AC/DC its first break on the airwaves well before they released their first American album, he also did the same for Little River Band. When Bartlett went to Seattle in June 1977 to become program director of KISW, he suggested to Steve Slaton that he play AC/DC. Claims that Slaton was the first DJ to break AC/DC on American radio should thus be treated with some skepticism.

8. DAVID KREBS

The co-principal of Leber-Krebs, the one-time management company of AC/DC, Aerosmith, Scorpions and Ted Nugent, the publicity-shy Krebs (pictured here with Adam Bomb) was absolutely pivotal in getting AC/DC important support slots for their roster of headline acts, especially Aerosmith. When Michael Browning was discarded as AC/DC’s manager in late 1979, Leber-Krebs underling Peter Mensch took over at the direction of Krebs, who had his hands full managing Aerosmith and Nugent. Mensch would go on to manage Metallica and Red Hot Chili Peppers and amass a considerable fortune but he cut his managerial teeth on AC/DC and by reliable accounts did a very good job. Again, it wasn’t enough for the Youngs. Both Mensch and Krebs were cut adrift by AC/DC and in my opinion it was a mistake. What immediately followed was a dark period creatively and financially for the band.

9. TONY PLATT

AC/DC has had a bunch of engineers over the years (the great Mark Opitz and Mike Fraser among them), but Platt probably stands tallest with credits on Highway To Hell, Back In Black and the underrated Flick Of The Switch (which he co-produced). It was the task of Platt to deal with the ultra-finicky, almost obsessive Lange in the studio and he must have had the patience of Job to do it without going mad. Platt was more into the “feel” of a take whereas Lange wanted it to be perfect. You can hear more of that “feel” on Flick Of The Switch and it’s thanks to Platt we have ripsnorters like “Nervous Shakedown” and “Bedlam In Belgium”. Whatever he did with Lange on their albums together (which also included Foreigner’s 4), they were an amazing double act.

​10. HARRY VANDA

It might seem strange to nominate one half of Vanda & Young, the legendary Australian songwriters and producers who helmed a stack of classic AC/DC albums, but Vanda was an integral part of creating the Aussie rock sound with Angus’s and Malcolm’s elder and late brother George. It was there in The Easybeats, the band Harry played in with George and which gave the world the all-time classic “Friday On My Mind”. It was there in Marcus Hook Roll Band. It was there in Stevie Wright’s solo work. It was there in Rose Tattoo and The Angels. But with AC/DC they perfected it. What I love about early AC/DC is the groove: the handclaps and the percussion. That’s Vanda & Young all over. If Vanda’s name were “Young” he’d be a whole lot better known by fans outside Australia.

2017 is an important year for AC/DC – or should at least be for every serious AC/DC fan. It marks the 40th anniversary of the international release of AC/DC’s landmark album Let There Be Rockand the 40th anniversary of its first American tour. My book, Bon: The Last Highway, is the untold story of Bon in America from 1977–79 and his death in London in 1980.It’s hard to believe just how far AC/DC – a band that has sold well over 200 million records – has come since that first show in Austin, Texas. To give you an idea how long ago we're talking about, John Lennon had just got his Green Card. Bjorn Borg had won Wimbledon. The Soviet Union had performed an underground nuclear test. Vietnam had joined the United Nations. Jimmy Carter, a Southern rock–loving Democrat governor from Georgia, was President of the United States.

Bon in Pennsylvania, 1977. Credit: Gino Zangari

They also had a proverbial mountain to climb to get the attention of booking agents and radio programmers, being such a relatively unknown quantity in the States at that time, practically unheard on the airwaves outside Texas, Florida and California, though the portents for their first crack at the USA at least seemed good for the Australians when they arrived in July 1977.AC/DC had made quite an impression in England and Europe and the Sydney Morning Herald trumpeted that the band was on the cusp of international fame: ‘They have moved with calculated accuracy in the direction of fame and fortune both here and overseas. Their records are consistent powerhouses of raw energy. Their songs move as restlessly as Hannibal’s elephants.’The reality, however, was a little starker for AC/DC. Down Under, the band was hardly flavour of the month.

AC/DC got banned from performing at Tamworth’s Town Hall in December 1976. An editorial in the Northern Daily Leader praised local aldermen for ‘acting wisely and in the best interests of our young children in refusing to allow the hall to be used if there is any danger of [rock] groups infringing decent moral standards by their on-stage actions and lyrics. Unfortunately, audiences at many of the rock concerts are mainly sub-teenage girls. They need protection.’On December 30 1976 an article appeared in Melbourne’s Age: ‘The five-member Melbourne group who claim to be the original punk rock band have had concerts banned, official concert programmes seized, and been attacked in both State and Federal Parliaments for corrupting children’s morals.’

In January 1977, Portland and Eaglehawk councils in Victoria asked for $500 and $2000 bonds respectively before they’d allow AC/DC to play. ‘This will prevent one of the group’s guitarists dropping his pants on stage,’ said the Age. In England, too, as Angus Young admitted, the dropping-pants act had worn thin with the authorities: ‘We’d have the whole vice squad at some shows. The same Britain where they have topless women in their daily papers… in the end, even the police were laughing about it.’

‘Audiences at many of the rock concerts are mainly sub-teenage girls. They need protection.'– An editorial in the Northern Daily Leader​​Stateside, too, AC/DC’s first international album, High Voltage (1976), a collection of cuts from their first two Australian albums (I've posted some photos of an original mint press release in the gallery above), was only getting heavy airplay from Bill Bartlett at WPDQ/WAIV in Jacksonville (proved by a lone 22 January 1977 mention in Billboard’s ‘Album Radio Action’ charts, substantiating without doubt Bartlett’s longstanding claim that AC/DC took off in Florida before anywhere else), but the band was to get a key review further south in the Miami News – nearly a year before they even touched down on American soil.

There aren't a hell of a lot of newspaper clippings about AC/DC from America in 1976 – I have a personal collection containing a few very rare clippings from Texas, and I found in archives several others I've included in the book – but during my research for Bon: The Last Highway, by pure luck I found this old newspaper from 29 October 1976.Jon Marlowe even concluded his preceding review of the various-artists Atlantic Records release Live at CBGB’s by saying, ‘If you’re into punk, just forget this one and pick up on “High Voltage” by AC/DC instead.’At a time when AC/DC wasn't getting a whole lotta love, how shrewd the floridly expressive Mr Marlowe turned out to be.

AC/DC in the Miami News, October 1976

HIGH VOLTAGE – AC/DC – (ATLANTIC)You say you ripped holes in your $30 jeans to look just like Dee Dee Ramone while dreaming of spending ten minutes alone with Joan Jett of the Runaways in the Aloha Motel with the Flamin’ Groovies blasting from your cassette player.And you say Yes are five musical vegetarians you’d like to run through a Veg-O-Matic and you refuse to patronize music stores that even stock synthesizers.Well, kid, have we got an album for you – ‘High Voltage’ – by a group of five Scottish-Australian punks who call themselves AC/DC and dress in London schoolboy clothes and utter such memorable statements as ‘Can I Sit Next To You Girl?’.AC/DC is currently giving Eddie and the Hot Rods and the Sex Pistols (two of Britian’s [sic] primo punk rockers) a real run for the money [sic] and you should immediately fork over the price of this one just for the wonderous [sic] experience of hearing the 96 decibel delight: ‘It’s A Long Way To The Top (If You Want To Rock ’N’ Roll’.)

In New York, during the writing of Bon: The Last Highway, I visited BARRY BERGMAN, formerly of Edward B. Marks Music Corporation. Edward B. Marks was AC/DC’s American publisher for High Voltage (1976) through to Highway To Hell (1979). When AC/DC first arrived in America in July 1977, he travelled with the band to Texas and Florida. The camaraderie, he says, was there to see.

Bergman with some guy whose name escapes me. :) Via barrybergman.com

‘I think the chemistry between them was incredible. I don’t believe [AC/DC] spend a lot of time with each other when they’re not working; I know that to be a fact, they do their own thing… my relationship with them was, I thought, excellent. I got along with all of them, at the time. I didn’t have a problem with any one of them.‘We [Edward B. Marks] got involved with [AC/DC] through J. Albert & Son in the mid ’70s. Michael Browning was the manager at the time. I was sort of like a surrogate manager because Michael wasn’t here [in the States] all the time and there were times when they were here and he wasn’t and I would help them out, deal with things for them.‘We gave Michael an office at Edward B. Marks, and I spent a lot of time running around with them to those early shows with Ian Jeffery, who was the road manager. I went to shows with them in Texas, here and there and everywhere else… I knew the way [the US scene] worked. I knew the way radio worked. This one worked. That thing worked. I was doing it, you know. So I was able to guide them.’Bergman especially helped with airplay for the band out on the West Coast and in Florida, where they first got played anywhere in the States by Bill Bartlett on WPDQ/WAIV Jacksonville.

Bill Bartlett

​Florida, he says, was the takeoff point for the Australians: ‘That’s where it all started.’Did you feel like you were needed by the band? That Browning didn’t know enough about America to handle it himself?‘I got along well with Michael. I always liked and respected Michael. It’s like everything else. You come here [to America], you’re overwhelmed. It’s a big country. Of course he didn’t know. There were things I didn’t know about my own country here. If someone had have told me it would have taken four years and a bunch of albums to break this band I would have never believed it, because they were that good.’In 1977, Bergman was in the audience for the recording of AC/DC’s Live From The Atlantic Studios promo album along with late Atlantic Records heavy Tunc Erim, who was Atlantic’s national album promotion director. Because of his seniority, Erim’s name appeared before AC/DC record-company loyalists Michael Klenfner’s and Perry Cooper’s on mailouts that went to US radio stations.

Bergman says Erim had many stoushes with the formidable Klenfner, an ex-bouncer, but Klenfner, despite his stature and size, always came off second best.Says Bergman: ‘Tunc got the job [at Atlantic] as a result of being at a party one night years earlier when he was a kid seeing a little old lady in a corner, going over to the old lady because she didn’t know what she was doing there or she looked alone, and he danced with her all night, hung out with her, and took her home. And it was Ahmet Ertegun’s mother.’Ertegun, of course, was the big boss at Atlantic Records.‘It was shortly thereafter that Ahmet called him up, wanted to meet him, hired him and there was no way anyone could ever touch Tunc as long as Ahmet Ertegun was at that company. So Michael, who tried to uproot him at one point, was not going to be successful. As Michael once said to me, “His name isn’t Tunc Erim. His name is Tunc Ertegun!”

Michael Klenfner

So who outside of the band was responsible for AC/DC making it in America?‘I would say [AC/DC’s booking agent] Doug Thaler, myself, Klenfner, and maybe one or two others were the reasons the band made it, especially Doug and myself. Because Doug was a real believer and a team player and he worked for ATI’s Jeff Franklin at the time. He put together a great tour for them and everything, and I think it was on a handshake.’He also says Klenfner, who got sacked by Atlantic president Jerry Greenberg in 1979, told him about the idea of dropping Harry Vanda and George Young as AC/DC’s producers and getting Mutt Lange to produce AC/DC. (This clashes with Browning’s version that it was solely his idea to recruit the Zambian producer for Highway To Hell and supports the testimony of others who I have spoken to previously from Atlantic who said the idea originated elsewhere, most likely from Doug Thaler.)

‘If someone had have told me it would have taken four years and a bunch of albums to break this band I would have never believed it, because they were that good.'– Barry Bergman

But didn’t Klenfner want Eddie Kramer to produce the band?‘At one point, yes… Klenfner had mentioned to me Mutt Lange… it came to me through Michael Klenfner, that, “You know, Barry, we gotta make change with the production of this band, because we’re selling records – [AC/DC] went from 75,000 to 150,000 to 225,000 [sales] and then the fourth album was the one.”’​Bergman relates his account of Klenfner flying down to Australia to have an audience with the band and Vanda & Young.‘I remember him saying, “I’m sitting in the room”, the big guy that he is, “on the floor and these little guys there and Vanda & Young.” And he told them, “If you really want to see your brothers make it, you’ve gotta let go of the production. You’ve gotta bring somebody else in here.”’

AC/DC with Colodny, Bergman and Browning, 1977

Bergman’s voice is made for FM radio. In fact, he could turn his home into a radio station. Thousands of records have been lovingly catalogued along one wall that runs the entire length of the apartment. He gets up off his office chair and pulls out an original Live From The Atlantic Studios album, a birthday card signed to him by the band, and photo albums of unseen AC/DC pics. They are very personal. Sightseeing together at the Alamo. Various stage shots. A picture of his cousin, former North Miami mayor Mike Colodny, with Bon and the band, of which Bergman owns and is inordinately proud. Colodny had given them the keys to the city on 7 August 1977.‘Nobody knew that at the time,’ says Bergman of his role in calling up Colodny and arranging a photo-op with AC/DC. ‘That stayed a secret for 27 years until the Miami Herald published it and found out. For years they called my cousin the “rock ’n’ roll mayor” after we did what we did.’ I called my cousin up one day and I said, “Michael, I got this band and we’ve gotta do something. I gotta do some sort of promotion or something to bring attention to this band.’ And he’s very powerful in Florida. He says, “Barry, I’ll get them the key to the city and we’ll throw them a lunch at City Hall and I’ll have all the press there, because everybody will be wondering, ‘What the hell is all this about?’ and then we’re going to play at the Sportatorium that night in Miami.” This worked very well. That picture went around the world. This was beautiful.’It’s been an impressive show-and-tell. But he’s most chuffed about his cameo on Live From The Atlantic Studios. Bergman says there was 300 to 400 people in the audience.‘I’m on this record. I make my singing debut with Bon. It ended up in the Bonfire box set. I will play it for you.’Bergman walks over to his turntable and carefully removes the vinyl from the mint packaging. It’s an original Atlantic Records promo-only copy. The needle finds ‘The Jack’ and Bergman turns up the volume. The sound fills the room, like we’re actually there.​Bon looked out for him specifically, he says, while Bergman was sitting up in the bleachers, ‘and he’s pushing people out of the way and he’s coming towards me, and he comes to me, and grabs my shoulder and puts the mike in my mouth and says, “Sing it Barry!” And I’m singing with him. No sooner the track was recorded the Young brothers, Angus and especially Malcolm, both said, “That’s the track we want to use.” And Angus said, “Yeah, we’re going to make Barry famous.” That’s a true story.’

​He finds another memento. ‘Here, this is a picture you’ll never see in a magazine,’ he says, laughing, and shows me a photo of members of the band holding up the blouse of a woman, a real looker, revealing her breasts. He then shows me on his mobile phone a picture of a very silver-haired Cliff Williams, photographed recently stopping by Bergman’s apartment. In the photo Williams is standing against the same crammed shelves of box sets, LPs, CDs and books, most of the LPs and CDs in their original shrink wrapping. Bonfire, AC/DC’s box-set tribute to Bon, had been taken off the shelf by Williams for the photo.AC/DC’s recently retired bass player had called Bergman out of the blue, after years of no contact, to say he was the luckiest man in the world, that the band had given him so much, he’d had 30 years with his wife Georganne and borne two great kids. Williams then flew in to New York to spend the day with Bergman.‘I said to Cliff when I saw him, “What are you doing with yourself?” He says, “You know, Barry, I’ve been to every country in the entire world, now I’m travelling with my wife to see them because I never saw any of these countries. I was in every one but I never saw anything.’As for Bon, whose heavy and increasingly problematic drinking he saw up close, Bergman remembers him as being ‘kind' to the end.‘Decent, caring, loving, he was really very nice to me.’So even when he was drunk he was kind?‘He was a good guy, yeah. You know, he could function.’